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[A. D. 1861.] full forty years had Mexico been convulsed with internal feuds, and during this long period she had passed through thirty-six different forms of government and under seventy-three rulers. Such a series of unparalleled revolutions and changes of administration could not but attract the attention of all the world. As early as April, 1861, Secretary Seward, of the United States government, wrote to Mr. Corwin, our minister at Mexico: "For a few years past the condition of Mexico has been so unsettled as to raise the question on both sides the Atlantic whether the time has not come when some foreign power ought, in the general interests of society, to intervene to establish a protectorate, or some other form of government in that country, and guarantee its continuance there."

This was a note of warning, showing that the United States, though jealous of the intervention of European powers, yet recognized the possibility—perhaps the necessity—of such. In March, 1860, the governments of France, England, and Spain, under pretext that the war in Mexico would be interminable, offered mediation, proposing to guarantee to one party the establishment of social reforms, and to the other that of conservative political principles. The conservative, or Church party—which the foreign powers were disposed to recognize as the de facto government of Mexico, while the Mexicans themselves disavowed